DAYBREAK IN...the world

"Daybreak of Peace" by Martin Luther King Jr.

"I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight
of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality."

"...nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time
...nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for
social transformation."

"Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live
together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into
a creative psalm of brotherhood
...which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation.
The foundation of such a method is love."

"I refuse...a militaristic stairway into the hell...I believe that unarmed truth
and unconditional love will have the final word in reality."

"I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history.
I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature
makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness"
that forever confronts him."

"I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom
in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events
which surround him."

"I refuse to accept the view that mankind
is so tragically bound to the starless midnight
of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace
and brotherhood can never become a reality."

--Martin Luther King Jr.
https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-acceptance_en.html
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1964
--

Every person,
every individual,
every human is of inherent worth, is utterly unique, is so valuable!

We need to oppose those in Christianity, Islam, and other ideologies which demean, oppress, and harm others.

We need to reach out to those who are misguided, troubled, deceived...


Live in the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Saudi Arabia and the UN Human Rights Council

From Amnesty International:

Take action now: Suspend Saudi Arabia from the UN Human Rights Council.

"We are writing to share with you a joint statement by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch
regarding the position of Saudi Arabia on the UN Human Rights Council..."

"...Urge the United States to support a resolution at the UN General Assembly
calling to suspend Saudi Arabia
from the Human Rights Council on the basis of its commission of gross
and systematic violations of human rights
both domestically and in Yemen.

In November 2013, when Saudi Arabia was elected as a member of the Human Rights Council, it pledged
among other things “to protect and promote human rights”...


...and to “support the human rights bodies and mechanisms
of the United Nations and cooperate constructively with them.”



It made additional pledges during its Universal Periodic Review in 2014,
including to consider ratifying the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights
and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,
and abolish
the system of male guardianship over women.

However, since becoming a Council member, Saudi Arabia has committed gross and systematic violations of human rights
both inside the country and as part of the military coalition it leads in Yemen.

The credibility of the UN Human Rights Council is at stake.


Since joining the Council, Saudi Arabia’s dire human rights record at home has continued to deteriorate
and the coalition it leads has unlawfully killed and injured thousands of civilians in the conflict in Yemen.

To allow it to remain an active member of the Council,
where it has used this position to shield itself from accountability for possible war crimes,
smacks of deep hypocrisy.



It would bring the world’s top human rights body into disrepute.

Saudi Arabia’s conduct demonstrates a persistent failure to live up to the solemn requirements
of membership of the Council.


There is no evidence of serious effort on the part of Saudi Arabia to address these violations;

indeed it has used its position to effectively obstruct independent scrutiny and accountability.

Resolution 60/251 provides that “the General Assembly, by a two-thirds majority of the members present and voting, may suspend the rights
of membership in the Council of a member of the Council that commits gross and systematic violations of human rights.”

We urge you to act now and encourage President Obama and UN Ambassador Samantha Power to take leadership on these issues and support a resolution
at the UN General Assembly to suspend Saudi Arabia’s rights of membership in the Human Rights Council."

--

Please send a letter or email to your congressional representative.





Thank.


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

The Tyranny of Certainty

Certainty—at least the intense feeling, the passion for that state of mind, that mental obsession, that human idol—is a dear longing, seemingly in nearly every human.

Probably, maybe, it was the devil in the bloody details which led at least 3 smart, fairly rich, well-educated young men in Bangladesh to slaughter civilians in a café for Allah.

#1 A handout picture released by the King Faisal Foundation on March 1, 2015 shows Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz left, presenting Zakir Naik, president of the Islamic Research Foundation in India, with the 2015 King Faisal International Prize for Service to Islam in Riyadh. (AFP/King Faisal Foundation)

One of the jihadists, Rohan Imtiaz, in the Dhaka restaurant attack last week put up a Facebook message of Zakir Naik's statement about Muslim jihad:

“If he is fighting enemies of Islam, I am for him. I don’t know him personally. If he terrorizing America, is the biggest terrorist, I am with him."

"Every Muslim should be a terrorist. The thing is that if he is terrorizing a terrorist, he is following Islam.”
Zakir Naik
www.Peaceforall.org.uk

#2 Yet the Muslim leader Zakir Naik, like other Muslim leaders, claims to be against killing!

How does that figure?

Because most Muslims believe they have a duty to kill or punish those who have “created corruption in the land,” a vague phrase that can mean a wide variety of actions, as any study of Sharia Law in Muslim countries shows.

Check out the news of the 700 lawyers working for the death penalty for individuals accused of demeaning the name of Muhammad:

"Leader of the Khatm-e-Nubuwwat Lawyers' Forum, a conservative alliance of lawyers offering free legal advice for anyone filing a blasphemy case, Ghulam Mustafa Chaudhry poses for a portrait at his office in Lahore, Pakistan February 22, 2016."

"The stated mission of the Khatm-e-Nubuwwat Lawyers' Forum and its leader Ghulam Mustafa Chaudhry is uncompromising: to use its expertise and influence to ensure that anyone insulting Islam or the Prophet Mohammad is charged, tried and executed."

"Whoever does this (blasphemy), the punishment is only death. There is no alternative," Chaudhry told supporters crammed into his small office behind the towering red-brick High Court building in the eastern city of Lahore."

http://www.reuters.com/article/pakistan-blasphemy-lawyers-idUSKCN0W905G


#3 Eric Hoffer, author of The True Believer, has answers:

“Absolute faith corrupts absolutely."

"The true believer is apt to see himself as one of the chosen...who is destined to inherit...heaven, too."

#4 Naik is a medical doctor who has become a very popular media speaker for Islam, has more than 100 million viewers,
and has been called the “rock star” of Islam.
However, he has been banned from public speaking in United Kingdom, Canada, and Malaysia.

#5 The list of café killers includes Nibras Islam, Rohan Imtiaz, Meer Saameh Mubasheer, Khairul Islam, and Shafiqul Islam.

Why did they lay aside their college educations,
their relationships, their families,
their social life, their friends,
their fun activities,
their interests, their passions,
their ethical intuitions,
even the usual understanding of religious ethics
that one isn’t to kill women?

After all, Muhammad, when he had at least 500 Jewish men beheaded, didn’t execute the women and children but had them sold into slavery.

Yet so many thousands of Muslim young men, now, many of them from middle or upper-class background, and well-educated, have gone off to jihad and killed hundreds of thousands of other humans!

They abandon what most humans want--
LAY all that down!

And often commit war-suicide, before they have hardly even begun adulthood,
in order to kill for Allah, for the God of 99 names,

to destroy young men and women at malls,
in heretical mosques,
in churches,
anywhere non-orthodox Muslims live.

#6 After shouting “God is Great,”
these 5 ran in and asked individuals

if they were Muslims
and demanded they recite the Quran.

If not, they hacked them down.

#7 The killers seem happy, totally guilt-free,
indeed, proud and dutiful.

They are technologically smart and upload photos during their attacks!

How could this impossible, horrific, tyranny of murder possibly happen?

Do these smart, happy-looking individuals look like the sort who would kill innocent civilians eating at a café?

#8 Eric Hoffer gives answers:

“Absolute faith corrupts absolutely.

To be in possession of an absolute truth is to have a net of familiarity spread over the whole of eternity.

There are no surprises and no unknowns. All questions have already been answered, all decisions made,
all eventualities foreseen. The true believer is without wonder and hesitation.

The act of self-denial seems to confer on us the right to be harsh and merciless towards others.

The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude.

No doctrine however profound and sublime will be effective unless it is presented
as the embodiment of the one and only truth.
It must be the one word from which all things are and all things speak.

The impression somehow prevails that the true believer, particularly the religious individual,
is a humble person. The truth is that the surrendering
and humbling of the self
breed pride and arrogance.

The true believer is apt to see himself as one of the chosen...who is destined to inherit...heaven, too.

#9 Three of the innocent slaughtered by the Muslim killers:

He who is not of his faith is evil; he who will not listen shall perish.

There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.

…a mass movement, particularly in its active, revivalist phase, appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self.

A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.

There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem.

[The true believer’s] innermost craving is for a new life - a rebirth - or, failing this, a chance to acquire new elements of pride, confidence, hope, a sense of purpose and worth by identification with a holy cause.

An active mass-movement offers them opportunities for both. If they join the movement as full converts they are reborn to a new life in its close-knit collective body...

Or if attracted as sympathizers they find elements of pride, confidence, and purpose by identifying with the efforts, achievements, and prospects of the movement.
A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.

It is obvious, therefore, that in order to be effective, a doctrine must not be understood, but has rather to be believed in.
We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.

Self-surrender...is...the source of a mass-movement’s unity and vigor, is a sacrifice...

To know a person's religion, we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.

The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.

The rejection of approximations and the insistence on absolutes are the manifestation of a nihilism that loathes freedom, tolerance, and equity.

Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanization. Hence absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.

Here, as elsewhere, the technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a malady and then offer the movement as a cure.

An effective mass movement cultivates the idea of sin. It depicts the autonomous self not only as barren and helpless but also as vile.
To confess and repent is to slough off one’s individual distinctness and separateness, and salvation is found by losing oneself in the holy oneness of the congregation.

...whether or not [religions such as Islam] develop into mass movements depends less on the doctrine they preach and the program they project than on the degree of their preoccupation with unity and the readiness for self-sacrifice.

We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility…"to be free from freedom”…Had they not joined…in order to be free from responsibility?
We are ready to sacrifice our true, transitory self for the imaginary eternal self we are building up, by our heroic deeds, in the opinion and imagination of others.

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength.
Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both.

There can be no mass movement without some deliberate misrepresentation of facts.

The act of self-denial seems to confer on us the right to be harsh and merciless toward others.

To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint. They are eager to barter their independence for relief of the burdens of willing, deciding and being responsible for inevitable failure.

They willingly abdicate the directing of their lives to those who want to plan, command and shoulder all responsibility.
Every extreme attitude is a flight from the self.

He turns away from an unpromising self and plunges into the pursuit of pride — the explosive substitute for self-esteem.
All social disturbances and upheavals have their roots in crises of individual self-esteem, and the great endeavor in which the masses most readily unite is basically a search for pride.

Pride is a sense of worth derived from something that is not organically part of us, while self-esteem derives from the potentialities and achievements of the self.

We are proud when we identify ourselves with an imaginary self, a leader, a holy cause, a collective body or possessions.
There is fear and intolerance in pride; it is sensitive and uncompromising.

Activists of Pakistani religious group Sunni Tehreek demanding executions of court sentences given under the blasphemy law...

The less promise and potency in the self, the more imperative is the need for pride. The core of pride is self-rejection.

A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves.

The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.
We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.

It is not love of self but hatred of self which is at the root of the troubles that afflict our world.

To find the cause of our ills in something outside ourselves, something specific that can be spotted and eliminated, is a diagnosis that cannot fail to appeal.

To say that the cause of our troubles is not in us but____, and pass immediately to the extermination of the____, is a prescription likely to find a wide acceptance.

To know a person's religion, we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.

Unlimited opportunities can be as potent a cause of frustration as a paucity or lack of opportunities.”
--Eric Hoffer
-------

Think and reflect on those wise words of Hoffer.

Is it probable that these smart, well-educated, fairly rich young men somehow felt insecure or guilty or uncertain?

And so latched onto Islam as the absolute, which it claims to be, as their one certain salvation?

Did they kill the women Tarishi-Jain and Abinta Kabir because they weren't veiled, or because they couldn't quote the Quran?

I don’t know the answers.

However Hoffer's answers are probable, unless one really thinks that the Quran is true, perfect, and eternal.

But we do know that all absolute religions cause slaughter,
intolerance, injustice, harm, persecution, inequality, and so forth
in the name of certain truth.


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Lift the people of Baghdad, Dhaka... in the Light.

Please lift the people of Baghdad, Dhaka, Istanbul, Orlando, and so many others suffering in religious darkness.

Baghdad Massacre, 215 precious individuals lost to religious hatred, Sunni Muslims against Shia Muslims.

Faraaz Hossain, a 20-hear-old Muslim student killed by Quranic jihadists
in Dhaka attack

Nibras Islam, one of the killers. Only months previously,
he was studying at Norhtsouth University in Dhaka,
driving around, hanging out with friends at restaurants, and watching movies.

Nibras and the other 4 attackers are all Bangladeshis from rich families and with good educations, according to Bangladeshi's home minister Asaduzzaman Khan. Islam's father is a successful businessman, one uncle a police officer, another a scientist, and another a government official.

The Bangladesh government said that the attackers belonged to a banned group, Jumatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh (JMB)

What is it about the Islamic religion that it leads bright, educated, wealthy men to murder large groups of people for Allah?

Why do millions of Muslims support attacks of other Muslims, ex-Muslims, other religions, and atheists?

Another father said of his son, "My son used used to pray 5 times a day from a young age."

Then there are the older leaders such as Ramadan Shalah, Secretary-General of Islamic Jihad who inspire the young men. Again, like the young jihadists, these Islamic leaders are highly educated--economists, engineers, doctors, etc.

Shalah earned a PhdD in banking and economics at the University of Durham in Britain. Later he was a professor at the University of South Florida.


He has been indicted in the past with a 53 count indictment in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida for activities related to Islamic Jihad and been added to the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list.

Shalah was involved in the March 2014 launch of over 100 rockets toward civilians in Israel. He said the rocket attack was coordinated with HAMAS.


Why do many millions of Muslims support attacks of other Muslims, ex-Muslims, other religions, and atheists?


May this ocean of darkness which has, again, swamped across the world, engulfing, deluding, destroying be wept against by all.

May all Muslims reject the horrific commands of the Quran and the false witness of Muhammad
and come to experience what is true, what is good, and what is compassionate.


May the Light of peace, hope, justice, and human rights shine.






In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Please Cancel the 4th.

This year we need to cancel Independence Day, need to mothball our raucous patriotism,

our own American focus, our own proud story...
Put those ceremonial clothes away in the cedar chest like our grandmothers put away precious wool outfits.

Because our patriotism, our own American focus, our proud story have wrecked havoc in places
that were already suffering from their religious debacle,
their own strident patriotism, their self-centered focus, their own proud stories...

#1 We need to turn our celebration into mourning, our self-focus into remembrance.

What is the source of all our wars and fights?

Reflect on that and change.

But this weekend--

Lament, mourn, and weep.

Let our laughter be turned to mourning, and our joy to sorrow.

Dirge Without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay
--


#2 Let's center in what is for the ultimate good, what will help the impoverished world.

It's not more of "God Bless U.S." (Insert the name of your own country, religion, ideology, and faction or sect)!

Never was.

Never ought to have been.

Ah, but we humans don't need those history lessons, again, do we?

Yes, we do, but not here and not now.

Now let us grieve this 4th.

#3 And let us give generously to those in need.

#4 Not weapons, not billions of dollars for wars
like the U.S. government did this last month to Israel, Egypt, etc.

But instead we need to give life-enhancing methods, technology, crops, precious pure water and so much more.

#5 And let us, again, remember those who have been blasted
from this life all too soon, all too quickly--

the young, the innocent, the suffering, the weak, the lost...

Instead of "bombs bursting in air," let this weekend burst with grieving and compassion.

Instead of "through the night our flag was still there," let this weekend be given to work for human rights.
Write a letter for prisoners of conscience, for orphans, for the impoverished...

When will the star-spangled night sky shine over a world of peace, hope, justice, and human rights?

In the LIGHT,

Daniel Wilcox

A 13-Year-Old Stabbed to Death in Her Bed! Palestinians-Israelis Need to Turn To Pinker's Book.

"Hallel Ariel stabbed to death, June 30, 2016 by Palestinian, Photo from Ariel family
Elisha Ben-Kimon, Elior Levy|Last update: 30.06.16 , 10:56

"The Palestinian terrorist climbed over the security fence surrounding the Harsanina neighborhood, infiltrated one of the houses located just yards away from the fence, and stabbed Ariel, critically wounding her."

"The girl suffered from stab wounds all across her upper body, and was evacuated to the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem where she later died of her wounds."

Hallel was asleep in her bed when murdered. Her bedroom where she was murdered by Muslim Mohamed Taraireh

Yet the Palestinian Authority had to this to say
of Mohamed Taraireh who stabbed a girl to death in her bed:

Official Fatah media Facebook page read (in Arabic): “Martyr shot dead by the occupation east of Hebron.”

“Image of the martyr Mohamed Taraireh, who carried out the operation today that resulted in the death of a settler and the injury of another settler.”

Palestinian 17-year-old Mohammed Taraireh of Bani Na'im, near Kiryat Arba. "Martyr" Taraireh slaughtered Hallel in her bed!

The killer's mother declared, "My son is a hero. He made me proud. My son died as a martyr defending Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque..."











Head of the Kiryat Arba regional council Malachi Levinger said "We are very hurt by this situation. This is a well known family in town. This is an unusual event – it's been a long time since someone has infiltrated into our settlement. It's a tough event, but it won't break us."

President Reuven Rivlin:"On behalf of the people of Israel, I send my condolences to the family at this difficult time, and offer strength to all the residents of Kiryat Arba."

"This terror by teenagers, incited by an education of blood libels given by their leaders must be stopped. We will fight it to the bitter end, firmly and without compromise."

"We will uproot the terrorists and those who dispatch them. We will insist on continuing to build our lives here, without terror, with the continuing commitment to cement our national home, and strengthen Israel. There is a a long and demanding road ahead."

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4822376,00.html

Strangely, Israelis fail to see that when they steal Palestinian land, water, destroy their crops,
bulldoze their orchards and their homes,
intimidate, oppress, and,
worst of all, also, murder Palestinians,
that
it is typical human nature for Palestinians to seek revenge against Israelis.

These unethical actions of Israelis doesn't make it just or right for Palestinians to murder an innocent girl in bed,
or to stab a 70-year-old Jewish woman at a bus stop, etc.
BUT
as Steven Pinker shows so clearly in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, both sides are guilty, not only Palestinian Muslims.

Both sides continue to refuse to ask forgiveness for their past injustices and killings and oppression--

Both sides continue to claim exclusive right to the land of Palestine/Israel--

Both sides keep seeing the whole conflict of the last 150 years only from their own perspective,

from their own story,

as if they are innocent, and all the guilt and evil happening is fault of the other.

From Steven Pinker:

"The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians stands in many people’s minds today as the nastiest ongoing cycle of deadly revenge."

"Not even Pollyanna would claim to have the key to solving it. But the applied psychology of reconciliation bears out the vision of the Israeli novelist Amos Oz on what a solution will have to look like:
"Tragedies can be resolved in one of two ways:...strewn with dead bodies and maybe there’s some justice hovering high above
OR
"on the other hand, ends with everybody disillusioned, embittered, heartbroken, disappointed, absolutely shattered, but still alive. And I want a Chekhovian resolution, not a Shakespearean one, for the Israeli/Palestinian tragedy." page 547

"The political scientists William Long and Peter Brecke took up the question in their 2003 book War and Reconciliation: Reason and Emotion in Conflict Resolution."

"They selected 114 pairs of countries that fought an interstate war from 1888 to 1991, together with 430 civil wars."

"When it came to international disputes, emotional gestures made little difference. Long and Brecke identified 21 international reconciliation events and compared the ones that clearly cooled down the belligerents with the ones that left them as disputatious as ever. The successes depended not on symbolic gestures but on costly signaling. The leader of one or both countries made a novel, voluntary, risky, vulnerable, and irrevocable move toward peace that reassured his adversary that he was unlikely to resume hostilities."

"Anwar Sadat’s 1977 speech to the Israeli parliament is the prototype. The gesture was a shocker, and it was unmistakably expensive, later costing Sadat his life. But it led to a peace treaty that has lasted to this day."

"The psychology of forgiveness, recall, works best when the perpetrator and victim are already bound by kinship, friendship, alliance, or mutual dependence."

[Note that none of this is true of Jews versus Muslims, Israelis versus Palestinians.]

"Long and Brecke studied 11 reconciliation events since 1957 that symbolically terminated a civil conflict. With 7 of them (64 percent) there was no return to violence. That figure is impressive: among conflicts that did not have a reconciliation event, only 9 percent saw a cessation of violence."

"The common denominator to the success stories, they found, was a set of conciliation rituals that implemented a symbolic and incomplete justice rather than perfect justice or none at all. Just as a microphone near a loudspeaker can amplify its own output and create an earsplitting howl, retributive justice that visits new harm on the perpetrators can stoke the desire for retaliation in a spiral of competitive victimhood."

"The prototype for reconciliation after a civil conflict is South Africa...Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu instituted a system of restorative rather than retributive justice to heal the country after decades of violent repression and rebellion under the apartheid regime.

"As with the tactics of the Rights Revolutions, Mandela and Tutu’s restorative justice both sampled from and contributed to the pool of ideas for nonviolent conflict resolution. Similar programs, Long and Brecke discovered, have cemented civil peace in Mozambique, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and El Salvador. They identify four ingredients of the success..."

#1 "The first is a round of uncompromised truth-telling and acknowledgment of harm. It may take the form of truth and reconciliation commissions, in which perpetrators publicly own up to the harms they did, or of national factfinding committees, whose reports are widely publicized and officially endorsed. These mechanisms take direct aim at the self-serving psychology that stokes the Moralization Gap."

"Though truth-telling sheds no blood, it requires a painful emotional sacrifice on the part of the confessors in the form of shame, guilt, and a unilateral disarmament of their chief moral weapon, the claim to innocence."

#2 "...successful reconciliations is an explicit rewriting of people’s social identities. People redefine the groups with which they identify. The perpetual victims of a society may take responsibility for running it."

"Rebels become politicians, bureaucrats, or businesspeople. The military surrenders its claim to embody the nation and demotes itself to their security guards."

#3 "...the most important: incomplete justice. Rather than settling every score, a society has to draw a line under past violations and grant massive amnesty while prosecuting only the blatant ringleaders and some of the more depraved foot soldiers."

"Even then the punishments take the form of hits to their reputation, prestige, and privileges rather than blood for blood."

"There may, in addition, be reparations, but their restorative value is registered more on an emotional balance sheet than a financial one. Long and Brecke comment: In every instance of successful reconciliation save Mozambique justice was meted out, but never in full measure."

"In all cases of successful reconciliation, retributive justice could neither be ignored nor fully achieved.... Disturbing as it may be, people appear to be able to tolerate a substantial amount of injustice wrought by amnesty in the name of social peace."

"...peel off the bumper sticker that says “If you want peace, work for justice.”

"Replace it with the one recommended by Joshua Goldstein: “If you want peace, work for peace.”

#4 Finally, the belligerents have to signal their commitment to a new relationship with a burst of verbal and nonverbal gestures."

“Legislatures passed solemn resolutions, peace accords were signed and embraces exchanged by heads of formerly rival groups, statues and monuments to the tragedy were erected, textbooks were rewritten...

[What the Palestinians must do immediately--rewrite the inaccurate history in their textbooks that they give their kids and teens!]

"The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians stands in many people’s minds today as the nastiest ongoing cycle of deadly revenge. Not even Pollyanna would claim to have the key to solving it...

"...the applied psychology of reconciliation bears out the vision of the Israeli novelist Amos Oz on what a solution will have to look like..."

Or Israels will continue to steal Palestinian land, water, destroy their crops, bulldoze their orchards and their homes, intimidate, oppress, and, also, murder Palestinians
AND
Palestinians will continue to seek revenge.

Like this today:-(

"Shooting attack at family car kills father, wounds mother and two children"

"A father has been killed, a mother critically wounded, and two children—a 15-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl—injured in a shooting attack, which took place on Friday afternoon on route 60 in the southern West Bank between Beit Hagai and Otniel."

The murdered man was Rabbi Michael (Miki) Mark, his wounded wife is Chava, and the boy and girl present in the car are Pedayah and Tehila, respectively. The couple have ten children in total."

Ynet reporters

The shot car--Photo: West Bank Emergency Services

"...the family was driving in their car when the tailing terrorist...opened fire. At least 19 shots were fired, and the attacked family's car flipped as the driver was shot. All members of the family were wounded from the car's flipping, and the boy was the only person in the car who does not appear to have been struck with a bullet."

"The terrorists then fled the scene in their vehicle...

Yoav Zitun, Rotem Elizera, and Elisha Ben Kimon contributed to this report.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4822953,00.html


Dear Israelis and Palestinians (among whom I used to live) please turn from the Darkness and seek the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

The Whys of a Theistic Seeker and Humanist

Growing up in a tiny village in Southeast Nebraska, we were taught that God is Love, Infinite Eternal Love, Goodness, Holiness, and Justice without End.

My childhood and youth were so wonderful, even in the midst of the common troubles and trials that every young human faces, no matter how good their family.

At times, we suffered in minor ways, but my sister and I were blessed beyond measure.

And far better and deeper and wider and higher than everything, than the whole limitless universe was the wonder of God, that despite all of the horror and tragedy and suffering facing all of humanity--in many cases situation so much worse than our minor scrapes--
there was the Infinite Care of the Father who loved every single human being forever.:-)

Of course, early on, despite a powerful conversion experience with God, I asked many confusing questions, deeply troubled by contradictions in life, in the Bible, in Christianity that didn't match the view that Life's essential essence was Love.

#1 Why did so many innocent people die of cancer, terrible tornadoes, earthquakes, and famines?
Especially very young ones, infants, children, young people, before they even had a chance to live their lives and do good?

#2 And why were there so many evil texts in the Bible since it was supposed to be inspired by God?

But living in the wonder of the joy of Christian trust and faith, I could transcend
these deeply troubling questions, even if there seemed to be no answers...

Because we were enveloped in God's infinite love--

That is until I met face to face....

with the leaders of Augustinian-Reformed Christianity, who claimed that our Baptist religion was an aberration, heretical, and that we had never been saved!

I met the first one of thousands of these nay-sayers when I was 17. This Calvinist youth leader also tried to convince us that God will call us Christians to commit immoral actions for God!!

(Note: Thank God, I've already recounted numerous times on this blog doing battle for over 50 years against that many-headed theological hydra, so I don't have to go down into that detailed abyss again here, nor share of how it murdered our faith, our trust, our hope, destroyed our lives. It has destroyed so many millions of humans' lives.)

Instead, in this article, I wish to deal with a few of the deep, puzzling and difficult-to-answer questions that have gouged my mind and my life over the years and still are there today:

One of my questions beginning when I was about 12 years old:

#3 Why didn't God emphasize to all of God's people down through the ages that slavery is inherently evil?

And related questions:
#4 Why does Exodus 21: 20 say, "When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave...if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for the slave is his money"?

And I Peter 2:18 "Household slaves, submit with all fear to your masters, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel"?

Think of the millions of humans killed or tortured and harmed and abused because of these and other verses!!

It was Christian and Muslim leaders, ship captains, merchants, plantation owners, etc. who carried out these rules and command, sure that God blessed their slave-owning, even when they were harsh and cruel, even when many of the slaves died in transit.

#5 If the Ultimate Reality of Existence (God, the Divine, the Spirit) truly has benevolence for all things, all beings, why didn't God reveal to humans 50,000 or 75,000 years ago the lethal danger of germs and viruses?

#6 Why did the Divine even allow destructive germs and viruses to come into existence and to thrive?

#7 Why didn't this loving God protect billions of humans from the Black Death, small pox, malaria, cancer, birth defects, and so forth?

#8 For that matter, why didn't God ease the suffering, even protect, all sentient animals, billions of them from excruciating harm and tortured deaths over the last billion years?


To be continued--



In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox